Posts Tagged With: stolen

Cairo (AFP) – Egypt said Sunday that it has recovered 90 ancient artefacts that were put on sale by a Jerusalem auction house, and has asked Israel to find other antiquities and return them to Cairo.

The ministry of antiquities said it had asked Israeli authorities to intervene after “spotting in recent weeks a sale of 110 ancient Egyptian artefacts on the website of an auction house in Jerusalem”.

The auction house was unable to provide documents proving who owned the items and Israeli authorities banned the sale, the ministry said, ordering 90 of the 110 artefacts to be returned to Cairo.

Egypt “will ask the Israeli authorities to investigate and find pieces that have already been sold so they can be brought back to Egypt,” the ministry added.

Ali Ahmed, an official at Egypt’s department of antiquities, said several ancient Egyptian artefacts were reportedly seen in Israeli auctions and that Cairo had taken legal steps to recover the stolen items.

In October, the ministry said it had received an assurance from online auction site eBay that it would not sell artefacts that had been illegally taken out of Egypt.

During the 2011 uprising that toppled longterm ruler Hosni Mubarak, several museums were pillaged, including the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities near Cairo’s Tahrir square, epicentre of the demonstrations.

Other museums were attacked in the unrest that followed the military’s overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3, and many items are still missing.

George Villegas was leaving his Coral Gables, Florida apartment building with two rolling suitcases containing 110 pounds of gold, worth more than $2 million, on a Friday morning this month when he says three men waiting outside stopped him. According to Villegas, they shoved a gun in his face and yelled that they were there for the gold. Villegas says “I tried to wrestle the guy down, but just let them go. Nothing is worth it – not even $2.6 million.” All three people fled the scene but Villegas later positively identified Raonel Valdez-Valhuerdis. Valdez-Valhuerdis was on supervised house arrest and is wearing a GPS bracelet attached to his ankle that shows he was at the location of the robbery during the incident. He now faces charges of robbery with a firearm, battery, and grand theft. Villegas is doing fine aside from some scratches. However, the gold is still missing. There has been an offer of a $15,000 for its return, police say.

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The FBI is reporting an unusual heist of some newly designed $100 bills that aren’t going into circulation until next year.
Agent Frank Burton Jr. says the cash was stolen from a plane that arrived at Philadelphia International Airport around 10:25 a.m. Thursday from Dallas.
Investigators said these Benjamins are easy to spot. The new bills have sophisticated elements to thwart counterfeiters, like a disappearing Liberty Bell in an orange inkwell and a bright blue security ribbon.
The FBI said a “large amount” of bills were stolen, but agents aren’t giving specifics.
The theft was reported by a courier service transporting the C-notes when the shipment arrived Thursday afternoon at the Federal Reserve Building in East Rutherford, N.J. Officials then discovered some of the money was missing.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Renoir painting that caused a sensation when it was bought at a flea market for $7 may have been stolen from a museum six decades ago, and an auction house has put its sale on hold.
The planned Saturday auction was canceled Thursday after a reporter for The Washington Post discovered documents in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s library showing that the painting was on loan there from 1937 until 1951, when it was stolen.
The Impressionist painting, whose title translates as “Landscape on the Banks of the Seine,” was purchased two years ago at a West Virginia flea market. The buyer, a Virginia woman who has not revealed her name, took it to auction house The Potomack Co. in July, and experts there confirmed it was by the French master Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The frame of the painting includes a “Renoir” plaque.
It had been expected to fetch $75,000 or more at auction.
“Potomack is relieved this came to light in a timely manner as we do not want to sell any item without clear title,” Elizabeth Wainstein, the owner of the Alexandria, Va.-based auction house, said in a statement.
Potomack and museum officials have notified the FBI about the theft, and an FBI spokesman said the bureau was investigating.
The documents uncovered by The Post in the museum’s library indicated that the painting was part of the collection of Saidie May, a major donor to the BMA. It was reported stolen on Nov. 17, 1951, according to the documents, although there is no known police report and the painting does not appear on a worldwide registry of stolen art.
The reported theft occurred shortly after May’s death, and the painting had not yet been formally accepted into the museum’s collection, which is why museum officials did not initially realize it had been there, BMA director Doreen Bolger said.
“We were caught by surprise,” Bolger said Thursday.
Bolger said she would be happy to show the painting again if it is ultimately returned to the museum.
“As this unfolds, we’ll find out more about the ownership of the painting,” she said. “If the painting is ours, we would be pleased to have it on view.”

===========================================A judge ruled that 10 rare gold coins worth $80 million belonged to the U.S. government, not a family that had sued the U.S. Treasury, saying it had illegally seized them.

The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle coin was originally valued at $20, but sold for as much as $7.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002, according to Courthouse News.

After President Theodore Roosevelt had the U.S. abandon the gold standard, most of the 445,500 double eagles that the Philadelphia Mint had struck were melted into gold bars.

However, a Philadelphia Mint cashier had managed to give or sell some of them to a local coin dealer, Israel Switt.

In 2003, Switt’s family, Joan Langbord, and her two grandsons, drilled opened a safety deposit box that had belonged to him and found the 10 coins.

When the Langbords gave the coins to the Philadelphia Mint for authentification, the government seized them without compensating the family.

The Langbords sued, saying the coins belonged to them.

In 2011, a jury decided that the coins belonged to the government, but the family appealed.

Last week, Judge Legrome Davis of the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania, affirmed that decision, saying “the coins in question were not lawfully removed from the United States Mint.”

Barry Berke, an attorney for the Langbords, told ABCNews.com, “This is a case that raises many novel legal questions, including the limits on the government’s power to confiscate property. The Langbord family will be filing an appeal and looks forward to addressing these important issues before the 3rd Circuit.”

The family said in its suit that in another seizure of the 1933 double eagle, the government split the proceeds with the owner after the coin sold for $7.59 million in 2002, according to Coinbooks.org.

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A U-Haul truck carrying equipment for Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign event in Detroit Monday was stolen this weekend, ABC News confirmed with United States Secret Service.

Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the USSS, told ABC News the truck carrying equipment was stolen between late Saturday night and early Sunday morning at the Westin Hotel in Detroit. He would not specify what kind of equipment was in the truck.